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Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - February 15, 2001, Winnipeg, Manitoba
A12 Fnnr FEBRUARY 2001 EDITORIALS Freedom ofTrade Liberty of Religion Equality of Civil Rights Murray must lead MAYOR Glen Murray must now show the courage of his He believes that user fees are the best way to ensure a better recycling program for Logic is on his Most certainly most young Win nipeggers who share his concerns about the envi appear to be on his He must rally that or risk his political He must or he shall Unlike the councillors who listened to some angry voices in their wards and trashed his plan to intro duce modest user fees to support Mayor Murray was elected by the city at large to serve the larger city interests rather than the smaller ward During the Murray seemed to forget who his constituents He failed to inspire the majority of Winnipeg gers to demand that those who create waste pay for and instead allowed a minority of many of whom remain unclear about the program and the exemp tions it offers for those with special to brow beat ward representatives into creating the tangled mess that the policy has Murray advocated user fees not simply as a means of financing an expanded recycling pro but as a measure to bring more fairness to the program while achieving laudable environmen tal Without user there is no incentive for house holds to increase with the result that those who recycle must pay the freight to bury the garbage produced by those who do not If Murray does not show if he does not reverse the tide so that the thousands of complaints about user fees become thousands of complaints about their he will be caught on the other horn ofthe dilemma he has forged for himself to cut Without user he faces a million hole in his one that will be filled from general which is Murray has until October to win the debate on user to keep recycling costs from driving and to save his He start winning that debate today by inspiring Win nipeg at No shame THE opposition parties in Parliament neatly boxed the ruling Liberals inside their own ethical decay this week when they forced a vote on an ethics reform the Liberals used to believe The manoeu vre showed the country how much the Liberal party has changed during seven years in The 1993 campaigning against corrup tion of the ruling wanted an ethics commissioner reporting to Parliament who would raise ethical standards in In they appointed an ethics counsellor who reports to the prime The 2001 Liberals are happy with an ethics counsellor on a short leash who gives them no grief over Prime Minister Jean Chretiens abuse of power to win patronage for friends in his home town of When the opposition this week asked the house to ratify the ethics system the Liberals sought in the with two honourable defeated the Veterans Affairs Minister Ron Duhamel explained that the opposition parties did not actually want the Liberals to be true to their own they just wanted to embarrass the There was a time when you could embarrass a back when they were newly elected and still believed in renegotiating the free trade getting rid of the goods and services tax and pre serving Canadas independence from the United Their capacity for shame has dwindled with each abandonment of If the opposition parties this week were trying to embarrass the Lib as Duhamel they were wasting their If they were trying to hold a mirror up before the faces of the Liberal ministers to show them their own discoloured they suc ceeded The right way PRIME Minister Jean Chretien this week encour aged Chinese judges to act independently from the government and to apply the law He praised recent reforms in Chinas respect for human rights and predicted further Chretiens role as leader of the Team Canada trade promotion delegation showed that Canada attaches enormous importance to its commercial relations with His remarks about the rule of law and respect for human rights showed that Cana da upholds those core values in its international As Chretien Canada has no authority to impose Canadian standards upon As a friend and trade Canada can tell Chinese authorities why law should be uniform ly applied and why judges should be Those ideas are so sound that they must eventually win acceptance if they are stated often enough and clearly Chretien spoke as he Motor patrol probes still idling TWO weeks ago I invited the women hired to entertain at the notorious Shrine motor patrol gentlemens dinner on 25 to call and give their version of the descent into To the professional strippers who per formed were upstaged by a couple of naked women who were paid to mingle and perform a tabletop sex Hoards of men then began grop fingering and assaulting Numer ous investigations were The Shriners promptly disbanded the motor None of the women involved but I did get my eyelids peeled back by a reader who figured shed weigh in with a few informed I think youre trying to get a hold of the wrong end of the Winnie Why go after the women at the occasion she wanted to If the intent is to change exploitive forces in dont expect help from the Winnie and I had a enlightening con versation about women who sell themselves for the twisted pleasures of She has never been a but having lived poor for most her she has spent some time drinking coffee with women who She and her friends scoffed at my naive con fessions and at the middleclass outrage that swelled when people discovered what the gen tlemens dinner had served Her life has been all too informed about such dinners and she has a perspective of men decidedly dif ferent from There are some common denominators of women and girls who sell their she They are almost all poor and live with Many turn to Another necessary we would be low or no Most of the girls die within a few Winnie Ive seen them come and Ive seen them go and Ive stood at their I suppose they were dead long But Winnie called because she had more than a rant to She wanted to read something more tangible than the exasperations of the sheltered She wanted something like a commitment that those who have power to effect change would be called to account for their The Manitoba Liquor Control Commission licenses the establishment where the event took place and it also gave a permit for the in this case to the motor The Shriners have an obligation to investigate how this which takes place every was organized and handled and to ensure it doesnt happen The police have said they are investigating because assaults did take place when things got out of the women on the tables told the men to So I The answers are not The MLCC says its investigator is still inter viewing Hes talked to a couple of the organizers including the one who denied see ing anything the banquet hall staff and managers who have also said they saw nothing and The Free Press reporters have been asked to cooperate in that investi and the paper has said there are legal avenues to pursue information it has beyond what appeared in the We cant be seen as being agents of the editor Nick Hirst The Shriners say that they will pursue the matter after the liquor commission and the police complete their Potentate Bill Kubik refused to say if he knows of the dinners that went on yearly before this years event drew This gives me little hope failing conclusive findings by the police and the Shriners will carry the matter Im still looking for an answer from the Win nipeg police about where their investigation Not much hope for a better No Winnies rolling her eyes as she reads She never said she thought things would She just wanted someone to account for it all and for people to know that in some ways these women are like your mother or Coco there has a real live mother and dad and brother who have tried very hard to save And one more chance to tell men who believe there is no way to diminish a woman who takes money for laying herself out No matter how high the pay or how low the everyone needs respect because it is the essence of self There is a reason many of these women die The Napster idea wont die soon IN one of his more precious moments last Irish singer Bono insisted that the free Internet songswapping wasnt going to bankrupt the music Remember when they said home taping was killing the record indus try Remember that Home taping wasnt killing the record indus try crap music Bono As long as theres good music being the record industry will be As far as the artist not getting paid and losing Im already Fair play to Bono and his healthy bank He and his survived home taping and may well thrive through the era of online copyright infringe That the business and the technol ogy of music have seldom been the easiest of With technological change came new power relationships in as well as shifts in the ways that listeners access artists how money is earned and control is Earlier this a appeals court panel decided that Napster had to stop allowing its more than SO million registered users to copy and trade copyrighted Shawn Napsters was just a tyke in the 1980s when blank audio cassette tapes were the Record companies cam paigned mightily against home taping then and lobbied for a levy on blank claiming piracy was costing them millions in lost Long before record companies had doubts about commercial radio broadcasting in the When record sales dropped in the 20s and alliances shifted major radio net works acquired record and radio became the labels best marketing As a colleague pointed out this even the publishing of sheet music was controversial in the 1800s because it altered the control and distribution of technology and musical styles may but arguments about fair use remain the In the case of Napster and similar listeners themselves have helped drive tech nological The music industry may be a wealthy but its been reluctant to grab hold of the possibilities cre ated by the The record labels won in court this but as one observer has pointed the battle will Shawn Fanning be in the The Internet isnt going away and the record companies need to find a way to live with and profitably incorporate it into business particularly because many artists dont see the Internet as the although they rightly want to be compensated for their The industry must also build some goodwill with music who seldom begrudge paying artists their but have grown cynical about the large take of the profits by major agents and With any the industry will recognize there is an appetite CD sales havent dropped since Napsters launch in 1999 for new obscure imports and back and provide it the way Napster even if there is to be a The retailing of music will change dramati Brian of the Canadian Record ing Industry predicted the day after the Napster Consumers will be better for he even with the anticipated paid subscription or feeperdownload Perhaps Napsters days as a free service were always even before a group of record labels joined together to sue for copy right After the business case for Napster a easy to downloadable software was never although its appeal was obvi especially for cashstrapped Fanning may have created Napster as an inspired way for music fans to freely share but venture capitalists soon jumped expecting money could be especially with tens of millions of registered Last Napster partnered with German media company and indicated it would eventually become a paidmembership It may yet happen this or Napster could be forced to shut down Whatever the the Internet has changed the distribution of music of most intellectual The genie isnt going back in the Winnipeg Free Press Winnipeg Free Press est 1872 Winnipeg Tribune est 1890 VQUZ9NQ74 2001 Winnipeg Free a division of newspapers Division of Thomson Canada Limited Published seven days a week at 1355 Mountain R2X PH 6977000 A mernberjol the Manitoba Council RUDY email [email protected] NICHOLAS HIRST
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